How It All Goes Down
At Last, Peace
- If you're bored by vampires, but want to hear about elections and political fights over slavery, this is the chapter for you.
- Instead of hearing about Lincoln, this chapter begins with an article that describes a scene that sounds like it's from Gangs of New York: in 1857, people are fighting all over New York City—except some of them might not be people, but vampires. (By the way, someone needs to mash-up vampires with Gangs of New York immediately. Please?)
- But back in Illinois, in 1850, the Lincolns have a new son, William Wallace, named after Mary's doctor, not the Mel Gibson character; and then in 1853, they get another baby, Thomas.
- The Lincoln journal is pretty sparse here since he isn't hunting vampires and no one is dying. It's a nice time full of playing with his sons and walking with his wife. Boring.
- Also, in 1852, Abe starts a new law firm with Ward Hill Lamon.
- And he's totally done with vampire hunting. He swears. He even burns his vampire-hunting coat and locks away his ax.
- Unrelated to vampires, in 1854 Jack Armstrong dies from some sickness he catches from standing around in the rain, trying to get a horse to move, which proves that your mother was right when she told you to put on your coat and not to fight with a horse.
- Also in 1854, Abe starts getting political again, speaking out against Stephen A. Douglas and his Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed Northern territories to vote to allow slavery.
- Lincoln makes some good speeches here and there, but he doesn't get elected. Bummer.
- It's a shame that he loses because he could be useful in Congress. See, the political situation is getting really hot around the slavery issue. All kinds of crazy stuff is going down.
- Abolitionist John Brown tries to get slaves to rebel; and the Supreme Court, in their 1857 Dred Scott decision, pretty much said that slavery is a-okay and that black people can never be citizens. Yeah, that one went down in history as a Bad Call.
- But let's get back to Abe, who just got another letter from Henry saying that Henry really needs Abe to come to New York City.
- Family road trip time! Why not bring the kiddos, after all? What could go wrong in NYC? Oh, except for the gang warfare and the vampires.
- Sure enough, while they're in the Big Apple, Abe is kidnapped by three vampires who take him to a secret location, where Henry and a bunch of good vampires are waiting for him.
- Oh, and the very human Senator William Seward, who is the guy everyone thinks will be Republican nominee for president in 1860 is there, too, and he's a vampire-slayer.
- Henry explains that the good vampires have formed an alliance (the Union) to face the upcoming war that they expect.
- These good vampires remember what it's like to be human, whereas the bad vampires think of themselves as kings. (See "Symbols" for more on that.)
- And these good vampires have been using human vampire-slayers to try to avoid this war by killing vampires that are pro-war. (Though we're still confused as to why the vampires can't do it themselves.)
- And now they need Abe to start helping them for realsies.